Who let the dads in?

By Danielle Teutsch

Thirty years ago, men were barred from the birthing suite. Now their presence is almost compulsory. A book of men's birth stories questions whether that's always a good thing. By Danielle Teutsch.

WHEN Joy Johnston was a midwifery student in 1973, she told her supervisor she was planning to have her husband at the birth of her child. Johnston still recalls the icy response.

"She looked over her spectacles at me and said, 'You mark my words. Men are going to cause trouble in the labour ward'," Johnston says.

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In those days, the idea of men attending births was radical, shocking, even "dirty". Husbands who did manage to slip in to the delivery room were given a seat and told to stay there in case they fainted. In little more than 30 years, a revolution has taken place in maternity hospitals. Men, once left to bite their nails and smoke cigarettes as they paced the corridor nervously, are now encouraged to coach their partner through labour, catch the baby as it arrives, and cut the cord.

Their presence is not only welcomed, it has become obligatory. Brave would be the bloke who backed out on the big day.

"It's not a choice these days," says Johnston, an independent midwife. "It's a command."

The question is, are all men thrilled to have front-row tickets at this event? Or would some secretly prefer to be in the pub until bub was washed and wrapped?

David Vernon, a stay-at-home dad who is about to publish a book of men's birth stories, says there is a small group of men who are definitely ambivalent.

"Anecdotally, I know that some men don't want to front up, but feel they have to," Vernon says.

John, a father of four, admits he went to the births of his children mostly so he didn't feel like a "coward" in front of his wife: "I didn't want to be there for the births for my sake, but for hers.

"I didn't want to look at the business end of proceedings or be an active participant. I had no interest in cutting the cord or anything like that."

Vernon says that once men did attend the birth, the vast majority said it was the best experience of their life. But it's not positive for all of them.

"Some of the births can be very traumatic and leave them fairly distressed and unhappy," he says. "Men often don't feel respected. They feel alien and unwanted."

Michael, one of the contributors to Vernon's book, Men At Birth, writes about the experience at his daughter's delivery: "I was starting to feel really pissed off because no one would tell us what was going on … I was treated as an intruder and that I didn't matter at all."

Another of the book's contributors, Matt, recounts how an emergency caesarean left him with terrible memories of an obstetrician yelling, "Get the father out!" leaving him alone to fret in a "wide, clean and empty corridor".

Fatherhood educator Paul Pritchard says some dads' hidden reluctance to attend the birth is caused by a fear of seeing their loved one in pain, combined with a feeling of helplessness.

"Here is a situation, more than any other, where men feel they are absolutely out of control," says Pritchard, the national training manager for parenting organisation Good Beginnings.

Pritchard well remembers his own sense of anger and futility as doctors failed in several attempts at a forceps delivery of his second child before finally ordering a caesarean. "Being in a clinical setting, you don't feel you have the right to question," he says.

If some men are unsure of their role in labour, the feeling goes both ways, with medical staff unconvinced it is a wholly positive development. A recent UK study found anxious fathers who attended caesarean births could be a hindrance, raising the distress levels of their partners.

The research, by the University of Bath and Imperial College London, published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, said many men felt ill-prepared for the shock of the operation. The study did not call for the banning of men during birth, but concluded there needed to be better education for men in antenatal classes.

A maternity care researcher at La Trobe University, Kerreen Reiger, says that midwives also have reservations about men's role during labour, feeling that some partners are "simply better out of the way". Reiger suspects the presence of men can heighten the risk of medical intervention, because they can't handle the painful, visceral, messy and noisy nature of labour. Then there are those who become over-enthusiastic coaches, turning labour into an even bigger endurance test.

"Midwives can be really angry with men who take over," Reiger adds. "They can be very controlling."

Reiger, a founder of the Maternity Coalition, is quick to note that the inclusion of men in birth has been largely positive. She was among the early natural birth advocates who fought for the right of men to provide hands-on help and support for their partners in labour. However, she agrees the huge social expectation for men to be at the birth is unhelpful.

"There's not enough space for couples to discuss its implications," she says.

One of the problems is that today's new dads are the first generation expected to be present at birth, and cannot turn to their fathers for advice, says childbirth educator Julie Clarke. "There's a real gap in knowledge," she says.

Even trawling back through history or examining other cultures, there is scant evidence of men having a role at birth. Traditionally, birthing mothers are helped by a group of experienced women. Little wonder then, if some men feel out of their depth. Vernon agrees it has been a sharp learning curve for this generation of pioneering dads. But he says the common thread running through all the stories he has collected, even from dads who witnessed traumatic births, is a sheer sense of wonder at the miracle of it all.

"It's awe-inspiring to many men," he says. "I was in tears at the birth of my first child, Michael. He had black hair, and a little red scrunched-up face. There was an overwhelming sense of love that came from nowhere."

Men At Birth, edited by David Vernon, will be published by the Australian College of Midwives in May.

PAUL WEAVER'S father was at work when he was born. He didn't plan it that way, but the hospital staff told him to stay put and that they would call him when he was needed. The phone call never came.

In contrast, Weaver, 35, could not have imagined missing the birth of his daughter, Maya, last Christmas Eve. "We created her together, so it would have been very odd for me not to have been there," he says.

Although he rates the experience as "amazing", he says there have been better days since then.

"There's a lot of pressure to say that, but no, there have been other experiences since that have been more amazing," he says. "Like the first time she smiled at me."